Cauliflower Curry

Cauliflower are secretive plants, with long, blue-green leaves that are perfectly shaped for concealing.  I planted a colorful variety of cauliflower plants this year, a yellow one, a purple one, a green one, and a standard white one, but for most of the season I only knew that each would produce a different-colored head of cauliflower because that is what the seedling markers at the nursery told me.  As the neighboring broccoli produced heads that grew from small to big to should-have-been-harvested-yesterday, then set about even more openly making secondary heads, the cauliflower plants grew leafier, clutching any developing flower heads so tightly that even if I tried to catch a peek, all I could see at the center of each plant were so many scoop-shaped leaves wrapped tightly around each other.

When the first head of cauliflower finally did emerge from its leaves around the winter solstice, it was almost full size already, leaving me only a few days to enjoy the view of a growing cauliflower in the garden.  And, of course, it was the white cauliflower that matured long before the colorful ones, giving me a couple more weeks to stare sideways at the remaining plants, looking for signs of color emerging from within the standard cauliflower-plant leaves.

Snow Crown Cauliflower

But I don't want to downplay the loveliness of the white cauliflower.  I harvested the Snow Crown Cauliflower on December 27, which was only 77 days after transplanting it into the garden.  The Snow Crown produced a large, heavy head of cauliflower that was delicious and remained crunchy even after frying it and cooking it with vegetables.  In fact, even after about 20 minutes of cooking, I wondered if I should have cooked the cauliflower a little bit longer, because it was still that crunchy.  So, for texture and resilience to over-cooking, I give the Snow Crown very high marks.

Given that December was the month of the broccoli and cheese – broccoli-cheese pie, broccoli-cheese soup, and broccoli-cheese salad – I wanted to do something different with the first cauliflower of the season.  I surveyed cauliflower curry recipes online and discovered that some of them called for methi (fenugreek) and cilantro leaves, both of which were growing in the front yard garden.  I narrowed my search to "methi gobi masala" recipes, or fenugreek and cauliflower curry recipes, and found a few that would make good use of the early, white cauliflower while also giving me a reason to harvest some fenugreek and cilantro.

All that remained was prep the cauliflower for cooking, which took me back, as breaking apart a head of cauliflower always does, to the first time that I prepped cauliflower.  It was a Sunday afternoon in the fall of my year of living at House of Commons, a vegetarian housing co-op in west campus.  I was cooking dinner for the house, or more accurately, I was assisting my co- dinner cook, who was the one with the recipe and the clue as to how to deal with so many heads of cauliflower.  My job was to prep the cauliflower, which the recipe instructed me to do by "disassembling" each head into florets.  Disassemble the cauliflower?

I should probably also mention that I was high at the time that I was reading those instructions, not because I had smoked cannabis any time recently, because, even in my early 20's, I was the sort of overly responsible person who actually preferred to do the major tasks of the day sober, and only then, with the work done and the dishes washed, I might have a beer or smoke some weed.  But on this particular Sunday I was still high from the brownie that I had eaten the day before on a house excursion to the Marley Fest.  So, 24 hours later, still high and by this point annoyed by it, missing my focused, sober self, I turned over that first head of cauliflower and began disassembling it, as the recipe instructed.   And I realized then that to disassemble was the absolute perfect verb for the situation, for breaking apart a head of cauliflower, which had the heft and the solidity and, when turned over, the internal framing of something that was built.  Maybe that is why those cauliflower plants are so secretive in their progress, protective of their process as they build a heavy head of curds that can only be accessed with a sharp knife and an eye for structure.

Methi Gobi Masala (Cauliflower with Fenugreek Curry)
Adapted from recipes here, here, and here

1 bunch fresh fenugreek (methi) leaves
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro leaves

1 large head of cauliflower
safflower (or canola) oil for frying (optional)

2 tablespoon safflower (or canola) oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
6-8 curry leaves
1 large onion, chopped

4-5 green chilies, seeded and chopped
5-6 garlic cloves, peeled
1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
1 large tomato, chopped
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon red chili powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1/2 to 1 teaspoon sea salt (to taste)

Remove the fenugreek (methi) leaves from the stems and wash the leaves thoroughly.  Set the leaves aside.  Remove the cilantro leaves from the stems and wash the leaves thoroughly.  Set the leaves aside.

Disassemble the head of cauliflower, or cut it into bite-size pieces.  Soak the cauliflower pieces in cold water to remove any bugs or dirt, then rinse and dry.

Heat a generous amount of safflower oil (about 1/4 cup) in a large frying pan over medium-high heat.  Fry the cauliflower for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until the cauliflower is browned.  Be sure not to overcook the cauliflower – it should still be crispy.  Remove the cauliflower from the oil and set aside on a paper towel.  Alternatively, to reduce the amount of oil in the recipe, blanch or steam the cauliflower for 5 minutes, then immediately drain and cool the cauliflower pieces.

Heat 2 tablespoons safflower oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat.  (If you fried the cauliflower, simply return that pan to the burner.)  Add the cumin seeds and curry leaves and fry for about a minute, or until the cumin seeds brown and become aromatic.  Add the onion and cook, stirring periodically, until the onion is softened, about five minutes.  Remove the curry leaves.

Place the green chilies, garlic cloves, and ginger pieces into a food processor and pulse a few times to make a chunky paste of the fresh spices.  Add the paste of spices to the pan where the onions are cooking, stir well, and continue cooking for another few minutes.  Add the tomato, stir well, and cook until the tomato juices are released.  Add the turmeric, red chili, and coriander powders and stir to mix thoroughly.  Add sea salt to taste.

Add the cauliflower to the pan and cook, stirring periodically, for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the cauliflower is tender-crispy and uniformly mixed with the onions and spices.  Add the fenugreek (methi) leaves and cook, stirring periodically, for another 5 minutes.

Remove from the heat, stir in the cilantro leaves, and serve hot with basmati rice or naan bread.

The Other Outside

Lee and I went hiking three times in the first week of the new year, twice at the Greenbelt and once at McKinney Falls.  It felt wonderful to be outside, to be in the woods, to soak in the sun of a few perfect-temperature days.  This is my new year's resolution, I thought to myself as we walked, to get outside more, to go for more walks, to enjoy the nice days of Austin's cool season before the brutal days of summer arrive.  And, while I was in the woods, walking down a trail, breathing in the earthy smells of recent leaf fall and post-rain regrowth, and appreciating the fact that each species of tree has a characteristic branching pattern and shape, like a visual fingerprint, that allows me to recognize it, even in winter, especially in winter, even without leaves, my intention was very clear and direct: I enjoy being outside and I want to spent more time here.

Bald Cypress in winter

Back at home, where broccoli and bok choy need to be harvested and cooked yesterday, and post-rain regrowth means that winter annuals (better known as weeds) threaten to overtake every non-mowable corner of the yard, and I find myself dressing for work by pulling jeans, washed and dried two days ago, out of the tangle of underwear and socks that is still sitting in the dryer, my mental resolution list becomes more muddy.  I want to get outside more, I want to go for more walks, I want to keep up with all the vegetables in the front yard and cook more meals from scratch, and, while I'm at it, I want to weatherize the house and replace the dead shrubs in the yard and read more books and write more and do my taxes before April and keep the house clean and spend more time with Lee and on and on and on...  Until, eventually, it is hard for me to distinguish between what I want and what I think I should be able to do with my waking hours.  Between being outside and the Other Outside.

I learned of the Other Outside from Benji, our cat.  At 17, largely retired from the territorial life of neighborhood kitty politics that goes on in our yard and garden, she is content to rule the household from inside, curled up on a couch pillow or stretched out in a sunny window.  But as the household ruler, she reserves the right to go outside when she wants, to smell the wind and find out what's up in the larger world of the backyard, to supervise my garden projects, or to interfere Lee's or my attempt to leave for work.

Benji checks out this year's kale

Though Benji is the most vocal (and loudest) cat that I have ever known, she always asks to go outside in silence, by queuing up at the back door.  I'm not sure how else to describe it, because, though she only a forms a line of one, she knows how to sit in such a way, with her nose pointed so purposefully toward the back door, that there is simply no doubting her intent.  She plans to go outside and she expects that one of her humans will promptly open the back door for her then hold the screen door patiently while she considers whether she really wants to step outside and, if so, whether she might like a moment to rub her cheek on the screen door before exiting.  When she is leaving home in protest, because I am doing something despicable like running the vacuum cleaner, the expression on her face as she lines up at the door is only subtly different, yet unmistakable.  If she had possessions, her bags would be packed, including letters of disapproval addressed to all the proper authorities, citing violations of Kitty Code 3-B: No Vacuum Cleaners Shall Be Run in The House.  Be sure to send us postcards, I tell her as she slips out past the vacuum cleaner.

The problem with the outdoors is that it is not always what a kitty imagined it would be.  For much of the year it is too hot, the back steps being one of the parts of the yard that is heated into submission every afternoon of the summer.  Other times of the year the outdoors is too cold, or too wet, or too windy for a kitty to linger.  And, even on the nicest of days, unless one of us humans steps outside as well, the outdoors is filled with cats, those annoying creatures that Benji wants little to do with since reaching the age of what my parents call "the entity," or the older, opinionated, female cat who no longer wishes to consort with all those lowly felines.  So, inevitably, and very often quickly, within a few minutes of leaving the house, Benji wants to come back inside.  This time, because we can't see her lining up outside the door, she yells and we come running to repeat the process of opening the back door then holding the screen door patiently while she considers whether she really wants to step inside and, if so, whether she might like a moment to rub her cheek on the screen door before entering.

Ideal for kitties: an open door

Most of the time, after trotting back inside with a How could you put me out there in that heat/cold/wet/wind? meow, Benji resumes reign of the household from one of her sleeping spots.  Occasionally, though, shocked by the inhospitable weather in the backyard but still wanting to go outside, Benji decides that she will instead go to the Other Outside so she queues up at the other door, the door leading from the kitchen to the carport.  Seriously? we ask her when she sets her nose in the direction of the Other Outside, Doesn't a kitty know that when it's cold and windy in the backyard, that it is also cold and windy in the front yard?

But I can't really find fault with Benji for insisting that the Other Outside, the outdoors that conforms to her idea of how the outdoors should be, exists, given how much time I spend gazing out of windows and thinking about my own, human version of the Other Outside, or what Cheri Huber describes as the alternate, parallel reality that exists simultaneously with this reality, and in that one, everything is as it should be.  In other words, the land of shoulds.  Where I know what I should know, I do what I should do, I feel what I should feel, and I always make the right decision.  The problem with the Other Outside is that, while it seems helpful, like a map or a guide toward what I want for my life, it is actually a constant reminder of all that I am lacking and all that I am not.  Because, in reality, I can't work full time and get enough sleep and take care of myself and be a good girlfriend to Lee and get everything else on my to-do lists done.  I can only do a few of those things on the list.  And I'm hardly going to feel good about getting those few things done if I am constantly thinking about all of the other things that I could also be getting done, if only I was living as I should be, as I do in the fictional Other Outside.

So, this year, I resolve to spend more time being outside, working in the garden with Benji or walking along our local Boggy Creek or hiking in the woods with Lee, and less time thinking about the Other Outside.

Barton Creek in January

Worthy of Broccoli

Broccoli is just too easy – easy to plant, easy to grow, easy to harvest, and immediately ready to chop up and cook.  Broccoli straight out of the garden is always delicious, a once-a-year treat, yet I always fell a little bit sad after I cut the head off a broccoli plant, leaving the plant decapitated and empty-looking, because, aside from a few tiny side heads that may or may not ripen, that is it for that plant.  Harvesting greens is an ongoing process of continual thinning, and harvesting summer fruits, like tomatoes, peppers, and okra, is a season lasting a few weeks to a few months, but harvesting broccoli is a one-time gig.  I look forward to it, and then it is over.

Usually, it is the wait for broccoli that, at least psychologically, extends the season, but my broccoli grew so quickly this year that I didn't get a chance to anticipate the upcoming harvest.  And this was despite the fact that I planted broccoli transplants a few weeks later than usual this year, on October 11.  I planted the baby broccoli into the raised bed along the south side of the house, where the hot sun of October (technically, a summer month in 2011) created greenhouse-like conditions.  The baby plants struggled with the heat for about a week, and then they began growing in earnest.  Within two weeks of planting, they had doubled in size, and by early November, having already grown together into a mass of greenery, they were growing so fast that I every day they seemed bigger than they had been the day before.

The day after planting (October 12)

Established and growing (October 27)

Bigger every day (November 6)

By mid November, the plants were so gigantic that I began joking that I wouldn't be surprised if a baby t-rex crawled out from under their leaves.  Then we had some good rain and I came down with my second head cold of the month and spent my free time sleeping, blowing my nose, and studying the color of my mucus.  Every other day I decided that I had a sinus infection and would call the doctor first thing tomorrow, and every other day I decided that, actually, I was getting better.  Eventually I was back to my just-a-slight-mold-allergy-because-I-live-in-Austin self and realized that I ought to walk around the house and check on those huge broccoli plants.

Full-grown broccoli plants (November 26)

Given their late planting date, I wasn't expecting ripe broccoli until January.  But there they were, at the end of November, forming huge flower heads.  The first broccoli to ripen was the Packman Broccoli, which produced a medium-sized, dark-green head with uniformly large flower buds.  I harvested the Packman on November 28, which was 48 days after transplanting.   Immediately after harvesting, I washed, chopped, and sautéed the broccoli in olive oil.  Eaten with just a sprinkling of nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper, the broccoli was tender and delicious.  Lee also noticed that it was sweeter tasting than store-bought broccoli, lacking the aftertaste of broccoli that has been refrigerated.

Packman Broccoli

The next broccoli in the queue to be harvested was obviously the Blue Wind Broccoli, which was forming a huge, dense head of broccoli flowers.  The weather cooled down – I finally turned our heat on due to consistently cooler nights – so I had a few days to watch the huge broccoli head before harvesting.  And, though the Packman broccoli had been delicious, I was feeling disappointed, as I am prone to being with broccoli, about how quickly it was gone.  So as I watched the Blue Wind grow bigger, I thought about how I could make more of an event of its harvest, how I could cook it into something worthy of such a huge, beautiful, one-time-and-then-gone broccoli head.

I harvested the Blue Wind Broccoli on December 6, which was 56 days after transplanting.  The broccoli head that it produced was enormous, with a dense center of smaller, lighter flower buds.  I tried, unsuccessfully, to get a picture that really documented how big this head of broccoli was.  Lee and I tried to get Benji to sit next to the broccoli but she loudly reminded us that kitties don't do wet and quickly fled the scene.  I also tried to get a picture of the head of broccoli with a ruler nearby for scale, but the angles just weren't right.  I'll just say this:  it was the biggest head of broccoli that I've ever grown, easily the equivalent of a rubber-banded bunch of broccoli from the grocery store.

Blue Wind Broccoli

I baked the huge broccoli into a Broccoli Cheese Pie because that seemed like the greatest honor that I could bestow upon a vegetable, to make it into several memorable, looking-forward-to-it meals.  I didn't have a recipe so I went by what I knew about cooking broccoli and potatoes and cheese sauces and poured it all into a pie crust.  My recipe is below, and the pie was delicious, but I will warn that it was also soupy when warm.  This is a problem that I have with savory pies, and I've come to the conclusion that this is why savory pies are usually made and sold in the single-serving "pot pie" size, so that the soupy, saucy insides are contained.  My fruit pies, aided by natural pectins and a bit of flour, usually solidify enough after baking (and cooling a bit) that I can cut out a slice without the filling from the adjoining pieces running out, but with this Broccoli Cheese Pie, once one slice was removed, the cheesy filling from the rest of the pie pooled in that empty space.  Maybe that is just the way it is with savory pies, or maybe I used too much sauce or not enough flour to thicken the sauce.  In any case, the pie was, as Lee put it, so good that he wanted to crawl inside of it.  We split the last third of the pie on a cold evening with a strong imperial stout, with Benji curled up in my lap.  In our family of three, there is no greater event in which a vegetable can hope to play a starring role.

Broccoli Cheese Pie

For the crust:
3 cups flour
12 tablespoons cold butter, unsalted
1 teaspoon salt (omit if butter is salted)
approx. 1/2 cup (+ 2 to 4 tablespoons) cold water

For the filling:
4 medium-sized organic potatoes
1 huge head of broccoli (or one bunch from the store)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
6-8 cloves garlic, minced

For the sauce:
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
1 cup vegetable stock
1 cup whole milk (or 1/2 cup milk + 1/2 cup half & half)
10 oz sharp cheddar, grated
fresh cracked back pepper

Preheat the oven to 375˚ F.

The pie crust recipe that I use for all pies, sweet or savory, is from The New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen.  It's a simple recipe that makes plenty of dough and rarely gives me any trouble.  I also think it's delicious.  But, obviously, if you have a preferred pie crust recipe, you can use that.  You will need to make enough for a double crust, bottom and top.

To make the dough, measure the flour and salt into a medium bowl and stir.  Cut the butter into chunks and add to the flour.  Using a pastry cutter or two forks, mix the butter into the flour until the butter chunks are no bigger than small pebbles.  (You can do this step in a food processor in a few pulses, which saves time and work, though then you have to clean the food processor parts.)  Add the cold water to the flour and butter mixture a little at a time, mixing the dough well with your hands after each addition.  Keep adding cold water until the dough is able to hold together.  In my experience, this usually takes 2 to 4 tablespoons of cold water in addition to the half cup in the recipe, but the exact amount of water needed each time I make crust depends on the ambient humidity (seriously!), so I have to go by feel.  Press the dough into one big ball.   Cut the dough in half using a knife.  Press each half of dough into a round, flat circle (about 6 inches in diameter by 1/2 inch deep) and wrap each round in saran wrap.  Place the dough rounds in the refrigerator.

Scrub the potatoes and chop into chunks.  Steam or boil the potatoes until they are tender, which takes about 20 minutes.  Drain the potatoes and set aside in a large bowl.

Wash the broccoli.  Discard any tough parts of the stem and slice tender parts of the stem.  Cut the head of the broccoli into bite-size florets.  Set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the onion and sauté, stirring periodically, until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes.  Add the garlic and cook another minute or two, stirring frequently.  Add the chopped broccoli, stir, and cover the skillet so that the broccoli will steam.  As the broccoli cooks, stir occasionally and add water as needed to keep the onion-garlic-broccoli mixture from burning.  When the broccoli is bright green and tender, remove from the heat, season with black pepper, and add the mixture to the bowl with the potatoes.

In a medium pot, melt 4 tablespoons of butter.  Whisk 4 tablespoons of flour into the butter until it is a uniform paste.  Add the vegetable stock.  If it is hot (I use the liquid from steaming the potatoes to make the stock), the stock will thicken immediately.  Add the milk and continue to whisk until the sauce thickens.  Turn down the heat and stir in the cheese a little at a time.  Turn off the heat and season with black pepper.  Pour the cheese sauce over the potato-broccoli-onion mixture and stir to combine.  The pie filling is now ready.

Flour your counter.  Retrieve one dough circle from the refrigerator and unwrap it.  Lightly flour each side of the dough circle and lightly flour the rolling pin.  Use the rolling pin to flatten the dough into a pie crust.  Keep rolling until the dough is an inch or two bigger than you pie pan.  Carefully fold the crust in half and lift it into the pie pan.  Unfold the crust and loosely fit it to the pie pan.  Retrieve the other dough circle from the refrigerator and repeat the process of making a second pie crust.  Carefully fold the second crust in half and cut small vent holes into the crust.  Pour the pie filling into the bottom crust and level it out.  Place the top crust over the filling, unfold it, and pinch the two crusts together around the edges of the pie.

Bake the pie at 375˚ F  for 45 minutes, or until the crust is lightly browned and the filling is bubbling.

Falling Back

It started with something small:  I missed brushy trash pickup last week.  I had my reasons, like that the week before I was recovering from a head cold, sleeping away my outside-of-work hours.  Also, that the brushy trash in question was still standing, as dead shrubs at the southeast corner of the house that were killed by the brutal summer, so removing them represented a bigger project than just hauling already fallen branches to the curb.  Brushy trash day is usually a big day for me, though, so I felt bad about missing it.  Which led my to look at my weekly to-do list and wonder why I never seem to get half of it done.  And, next thing I knew, I was thinking about everything, from the garden projects to the home renovations, that have been on my all-inclusive, back-of-the-mind, someday to-do list seemingly forever, and I decided that I needed to get a handle on my time.

When the to-do lists fail, I get out the grid.  The grid is a spreadsheet of all the available hours in the week, with each cell (square) representing a half hour.  Though the grid is a computer file that I can type into, I prefer to print the empty grid and fill it in by hand.  I love charts and graphs, so a blank grid of all of my time is always appealing, and some part of me is just sure that I'm going to find the hidden half an hour that solves all my time-management problems.

I found a stack of blank copies of my time grid at the bottom of a drawer, but they were dated, representing the schedule I was on as a teacher.  To be useful now, I needed to modify the spreadsheet to reflect my swing-shift reality, with days starting at 10 or 11 AM, and with my weeks starting on Monday, not Sunday.  (If it were up to me, I would print calendars with Mondays in the far-left column and Sundays in the far-right.)  And I almost did modify my time grid and print out an updated copy to begin mapping my week into.

Then I remembered the first time that I ever made a grid of all the hours in my day and put myself on a strict program of recording how I used each half an hour.  I was in ninth grade and I was feeling out of control and hoping that, if I could just locate all the wasted time in my day, I could make myself more productive.  I hand-drew the grid onto notebook paper and made a key of symbols to draw in each square indicating how I used the time.  I probably enjoyed making the grid, just as I enjoy the idea of mapping my week onto a blank spreadsheet now.  But it makes me a little sad now to think of my fourteen-year-old self, a girl who was getting all A's in school and spent her out-of-school hours riding and caring for horses, helping her mom with yard work, reading, taking walks down the gravel road, and eating meals and watching movies with her family, trying to force herself to be more productive.

And, as I remembered that grid and the determination I had towards wanting to feel in control, I remembered the other component of my ninth-grade self-improvement campaign:  Project X.  The goal of Project X, which was so named so that I could write it on my to-do list without fears of being found out, was to quit masturbating.  Of course, despite repeated attempts to really quit this time, I always failed to complete Project X, until eventually I became old enough to realize that quitting masturbating simply wasn't an option and, besides, why would I want to?

In contrast, I did manage to make myself more productive starting in ninth grade.  As high school progressed I added more and more to my schedule, starting with track, then cross country, then college-prep courses, then drama and an expanded group of friends, then driving to school, to my sister's school, to my friends' houses, to almost-weekly sports events, and to the stables, then honor society, and then, finally, I filled out all that I was doing on my college applications.  By my senior year I wasn't sleeping enough but, despite that or maybe in part because of that, I finally felt good about myself.  At least, I did when I wasn't crying my way through a rare but telling I-can't-do-this-anymore breakdown.

Over twenty years later, I not only understand why Project X was doomed to failure, but I also recognize the underlying fears that led me to put Project X at the top of my to-do list so many times – fear of being out of control in my own body, fear that I was dirty or bad or gross, and, worse of all, fear that my peers or family would find out that shameful truth about me.  And I can appreciate how beneficial failing at Project X was for me.  By failing to control my natural desires, I learned that out-of-control can feel awfully good, and I got to spend the first years of my sexuality with myself, finding out what feels good to me.  I can't know what that alternative universe where I succeeded at Project X is like, but I'm quite sure that I prefer this one, where I have a lighter, more accepting view of my sexuality rather than one of shame.

Yet, when it comes to trying to get a handle on my time, here I am, just as many years later, still pulling out the schedule grid when my to-do list stagnates.  While there is nothing wrong with time management or using to-do lists or charts or grids (and, seriously, I do love to build a spreadsheet), I know that the reason why I associate my time grids of today with the one that I made in ninth grade is because the underlying feeling is the same.  That feeling goes something like, I am not good enough because I do not do enough.  And that feeling is neither light nor accepting, but instead weighs heavily over my life, constantly pressuring and judging how I use every minute.  I'm living in universe where did I succeed to get my use of time under control, or, more accurately, where I have succeeded in believing that, if I could just get a handle on my time, then I could finish my to-do list and finally relax a bit.  Instead the list just seems to get longer with every year that I grow older, and I can't help but wonder just how much I could gain by finally failing to have control over my time.

In Pursuit of the Proper Cold Front

September 5 & 15.  The first two cold fronts of the season didn't do shit.  Pardon the attitude and the language, but, after months of blinding hot temperatures, highs in the 90's with no chance of rain felt more like a distant memory of summers past, or a reminder of how we defined hot as balls back before 2011, than of any real reprieve from the ongoing hottest and longest summer on record.  You have to be in Austin, in September, having spent the summer here, to understand how anyone could refer to 95˚ F as a "cold front," and this year I just wasn't buying it.  Cold front, my ass.

Being surrounded by plant death didn't help my state of mind.  My gardens were abandoned, emptied of even the drought-hardy pepper plants, the ones that I had expected to survive through the summer and until the first freeze, shortly after the Stage 2 Water Restrictions notice arrived in the mail.  Only two of the perennial herbs that I planted in the spring, the rosemary and the sage, still grew in the front-yard garden, while the thyme, oregano, and tarragon plants had turned brown and crispy about the same time I gave up on the okra.  In the strip next to the driveway, about a third of the drought-hardy perennials, "water-wise" plants specifically selected for their ability to withstand oven-like summer conditions, had been lost to the heat of July and August, while their remaining neighbors were hanging on for their lives, barely any bigger in size than when I planted them in the spring.  Around my house and my neighbors' houses, long-established shrubs – those anonymous boxy ones that have been there forever, surviving countless Austin summers without care or watering or anyone's second thought – were also turning unhealthy shades of yellow and brown, killed by this summer.  And all around town, trees of all ages were dropping their leaves early, turning unhealthy shades of fall early, or simply dying where they had grown for so many years.

By the last week in September, when the high temperatures had climbed, yet again, back into the 105˚ F range, my mood as a gardener had sunk from, This is my month off, to, I don't know if I can start again.  I was depressed.  I knew that, according to the calender, it was time to plant broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage transplants, but I couldn't imagine planting anything young and green into such a cruel world.  I also knew that, in just a couple of weeks, it would be time to plant seeds, for lettuces, fall greens, and winter herbs.  It was my favorite time of the year, time to prepare my garden beds for fresh new rows of seeds and to get lost in the seed section of the plant store.  But instead of feeling the delicious anticipation of the cooler growing season, I was stuck in the inertia of the never-ending summer.

September 30.  The third cold front of the season knocked the temperatures out of the triple-digit range for good.  I woke early (for me) on the second morning in October and headed out for a walk.  As I walked down the street, I was struck by how quiet the neighborhood was in the late morning.  So quiet that I could hear my own footsteps crunching through the dry grass of the greenbelt.  I looked back at my neighborhood and realized that, for the first time in months, all of our air-conditioning units were silent at once.  I didn't appreciate how loud all those engines were until they were finally silent and, relieved by the absence of that constant humming, my shoulders dropped a few millimeters away from my ears.

The next day I began watering my gardens and compost pile.  To garden again, to trust the universe of central Texas to provide life-sustaining conditions once again, still seemed like a foolish idea.   Yet I was beginning to grasp the fact that, while the heat would eventually break and give way to the cool season, we weren't necessarily going to get the ground-soaking rains that my garden needed to start growing again.  So I began hand-watering the beds that I planned to plant, hoping that some of the moisture would soak through the thick layers of summer mulch and bring the soil back to life.  I was also hoping that the water would loosen the soil enough to be worked.  Later that week, I dug the remaining taproots of okra, eggplant, and fennel plants out of the garden beds and, in doing so, discovered that beautiful, dark, crumbly garden soil was still there, hiding under layers of leaf and alfalfa mulch.

For me, nothing is more motivating than turning, and smelling and feeling, a shovelful of fertile soil.  Within hours I had a garden plan and a list for the nursery and I was ready to begin again.  Rain was predicted for the weekend and, though I wasn't expecting the universe to pull though with an actual rainstorm, I figured that it was time to buy those broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage transplants.  At the garden center, I found trays of leggy baby plants, grown to be ready for planting a few weeks earlier.  I carefully selected fifteen plants – 5 broccoli, 4 cauliflower, 3 cabbages, 2 collards, and 1 Brussels sprout – of fifteen varieties, plus a few herbs to replace those that I had lost, plus a handful of seed packets.  As soon as the next front arrived, I was ready to plant.

October 8 & 9.  The fourth cold front brought ground-soaking rains.  Finally.  I wish I could say that I enjoyed the rainstorm, because I do love a thunderstorm, but I spent most of it indoors, without windows, at work.  And I was grumpy that weekend because I knew that I was scheduled to work ten of the next eleven days, at exactly the time that it was finally time to plant my fall garden.  So, to my coworkers, I apologize, because I simply didn't have the patience to deal with another pallet of unexpected, unordered cereal in the midst of the usual backstore chaos, knowing that on the other side of the back doors, outside, it was finally raining.

After the storm passed, I transplanted the baby broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, and Brussels sprout into the garden along the south wall of the house.  Almost immediately, temperatures rebounded into the high 80's, which felt downright summer-like along that south wall.  My baby plants wilted in the midday sun and the smallest of the cabbages, the one with only two sturdy leaves, threatened to perish in the heat.  I hand watered the transplants every day and told them to hang on for cooler days.

The fourth front might not have brought much cooler temperatures but the fact that it did arrive in the midst of a ground-soaking rain was a huge relief.  Without rain, fall planting feels calender-driven and robotic: I will plant now because it is time.  With rain, it feels like time to plant, which may not seem like much of a difference except that, for me, gardening is most rewarding when I am working with the plants and the seasons: put the right plant in the right place at the right time.  So, after a summer of fighting against heat and drought, a good fall rain was like hitting the reset button for me.  The ground was soft, the rain lilies were blooming, and it was time to plant.  I transplanted the baby collards and herb plants, a thyme, an oregano, and a horehound plant, into the front-yard garden.  Then I dug compost into each bed and carved rows for planting seeds – lettuces, Asian greens, mustard, two varieties of kale, fenugreek, carrots, cilantro, and parsley.

Inside the house, the cold front triggered the fall-cleaning urge in Lee, who spent most of the following week moving everything out of his jam room, cleaning and resealing the floor, and rearranging his furniture.  I am usually the one to disrupt the household with my projects, but this time it was Benji (the cat) and I who tiptoed around musical equipment, giving each other distressed looks (and she did some yelling), before finding a safe place to curl up on the front-room couch.  It was interesting to be on the observing end of a clean-out, feeling that manic energy instead of generating it.  I understand better now why Benji and Lee scurry to the back of the house with anxious looks in their eyes when I decide that it's way past time to scrub the kitchen floor.  By the weekend, the clean-out energy, and various clutter that we didn't need anymore, had reached the sidewalk in time for our area's Bulk Trash pickup.  The clean-out vibe quickly spread down the street, and, within hours, every household on the block seemed to be getting rid of its least-comfortable chair.  After dark, Bulk Trash pickup turned into a your-trash-is-my-treasure swap, so that most of the piles of discarded stuff disappeared before pickup even began.

October 18.  The fifth cold front of the season was windy and dry.  It brought the cooler days needed for my broccoli-family transplants to establish and begin growing in earnest in their protected, south-facing garden.  In a matter of days they seemed to double in size, growing from spindly transplants into wide- and many-leaved plants whose leaves were almost touching.  In the front-yard, windy conditions dried the top of the soil where I had just planted so many rows of seeds and I feared that I would have lower germination rates as a result.  But I kept watering every day and soon thick rows of seedlings began to break through the soil.  The Asian greens and mustards were the first to germinate, of course, followed by the kales, fenugreek, and lettuces.

Later that week, I planted seeds in the shady backyard garden.  This year I only planted seeds of plants that were able to tolerate the shady conditions last year, red-leaved lettuces, chard, beet greens, and spinach.  It was a risk, planting my favorites of all the fall greens, the beet greens, chard, and spinach, in the less-than-ideal, shady conditions of the backyard.  But it may give me a later, spring season of greens to harvest from the backyard long after the fast-growing mustard-family greens have gone to seed in the front yard.

On Saturday Lee and I dusted off our state park pass and headed to McKinney Falls for a hike around the Onion Creek loop trail.  The creek was low, barely flowing over the falls, but actually held far more water than I expected.  And the trail was lined with the new, green leaves and round, pink flowers of Wood-Sorrel, a fall wildflower that had been encouraged out of dormancy by the rains two weekends earlier.  Slowly but surely, the lives that went on hold back in May, hidden inside our houses or waiting in dormancy underground, were starting up again.

Wood-Sorrel (Oxalis drummondii)

October 27.  With the sixth front of the season, the hot season has finally given way to the cool season.  Not that we won't see warm temperatures again soon – the cool season in Austin is defined by change, not by cold weather, which is always temporary here.  But the north wind tonight is actually cold, and standing outside in it made me cold, as in uncomfortably cold, a state that I haven't experienced in months.  The truth is, I don't like being cold.  And that is when I know that the seasons have changed in Austin, that we are officially in the cool season, when I feel cold enough to remember how much I don't like being cold and to just as quickly realize that, given how much I have been complaining about the heat all summer, I'd better get ready to embrace the season of change.  

The Secretariat Finish

I've been calling it the Secretariat finish.  When Secretariat ran the Belmont Stakes, he set a fast early pace and never slowed down, running the race in record time and clocking the fastest 1.5 miles run by a horse on any dirt racetrack, a record that still stands.  What was particularly amazing about the race, the reason the race became legend, was the way that Secretariat didn't just maintain his fast pace through the end of the race but actually found, in the final stretch of the long race, yet another level of speed.  People who saw the race in 1973, like my dad who watched the race on TV, say that Secretariat won the race then, with the other horses out of the picture, found his own stride.  My dad gets a certain look on his face when he tells this story, a look that's a combination of disbelief, after all these years, and of reverence, for the horse, and for the opportunity to watch as Secretariat galloped away from the other horses in the race, horses that, by all other standards, were also running a fast race.  Secretariat didn't just win the Belmont, and didn't just set a course record, but continued to charge ahead for the full length of the long race, widening the gap between himself and the other horses, finishing the race a record 31 lengths in front of the second place horse.

So when Austin set the record for number of days over 100˚ F in late August, a tough record that we came one day from reaching in 2009, that most-recent brutal summer, and the long-term forecast continued to hold nothing but triple-digits, I started comparing this summer to Secretariat's Belmont finish.  Like the horse, this hot season started early, kept on without a break through the summer months, and broke the official record by the end of August.  And, then, like Secretariat in the last 1/2 mile of the Belmont, this summer didn't quit but continued on, producing a few of the hottest days on record (August 27, 28, and 29 were 110˚, 112˚, and 109˚ F, respectively) and racking up another 20 days of triple-digit heat, after the record was already broken.

Number of Days Over 100˚ F 

Austin, Texas

1. 2011 – 90 days
2. 1925 – 69 days
3. 2009 – 68 days
4. 1923 – 66 days
5. 2008 – 50 days
6. 2000 – 42 days

 Another 20 days.  Recall the summer of 2009.  It was hot, really hot.  We all complained about it and thought of it as the hottest summer ever, which, at the time, it was.  But one day before we were going to tie with the record for the number of days over 100˚ F, the heat broke.  This year, 2011, is once again the hottest summer on record, and this time we broke that 1925 record, with 70 days of temperatures over 100˚ F.  That record 70th day was on August 24, right around the time that the weather broke in 2009.  Now, I'm not suggesting that the hot season in Austin is ever over by September, but cold fronts usually start to have some cumulative effect, so that each time the heat returns after a cold front, it is slightly less hot, with high temperatures edging down into the tolerable 90's and, later in the month, into the almost-comfortable low 90's.  But this year, the September cold fronts came and went, and those high temperatures just kept bouncing back into the 100's, all the way into the last week of the month, when we had five days in a row over 100˚ F.  The last of those days, September 29, was the 90th day of triple-digit heat this summer.

Think about 90 days versus 70 days.  Ninety days over 100˚ F is three months of insanity.  And 21 full days over the record of 69 days, a tough record that hadn't been beaten since 1925.  We beat the record then we galloped on for another full month, accumulating 20 more days – that's a full third of the record itself – of triple-digit temperatures.  That's why I have been saying that this summer broke the records the way that Secretariat won the Belmont: early, fast, and relentless, with unexpected power in the finish.  Now we can only hope that this summer proves to be as rare as Secretariat, and that the records of this summer, like the records of Secretariat, remain unbroken.

In Search of Water

This summer just won't end.  For weeks, since the calender said that fall was approaching (hah!), we've been waiting for an opportunity to get outside for a hike, preferably not in the triple-digit heat.  Finally, last week, with a shared weekday off for our anniversary, Lee and I decided that, running water or not, hot summer day or not, we were just going to have to get out in it.

We went to the Hamilton Pool Preserve, a Travis county park where Hamilton Creek, a tributary of the Pedernales River, flows over a ledge, as a waterfall, into a pool in a limestone grotto below, creating a natural swimming hole.  As one of the last places with running water and reliable swimming in dry summers, Hamilton Pool is very popular on weekend days in the summer and regularly fills to capacity.  Arriving late on a Monday morning, we were looking to miss the crowds and have the trail to ourselves.  We were also hoping that the spring-fed creek would be flowing.

Hamilton Creek was running, though barely so.  A trickle of water fell from the top part of the creek into the pool, which was open for swimming, though the water was a murky green.  We walked around the pool, enjoying the cool air along the back side of the grotto, where rock walls out of reach of the midday sun still held, even at noon, the cool of the evening, then we headed out on the trail to the river.

This was the restorative part of the journey, walking beneath healthy cypress trees with their roots in the creek below.  The creek wasn't running quickly, but it was a couple feet deep in places, with cool water that was still supporting fish and turtles and baby cypress trees.  The presence of water made all the difference, cooling and humidifying, in a pleasant way, the air in the canyon along the creek.  For that short stretch of creek we left the drought that has so defined this summer, the extreme and lasting heat, the dry winds, and the lack of rainfall, in the uplands above.  In this way, the preserve is doing its job, providing a refuge for plants and animals through the roughest months of the year.  And providing me a place to breathe fresh, tree-made oxygen and gaze up into the branches of cypress, Spanish oak, and elm trees still holding onto their green leaves.

Along the trail at ground level, the pink-purple flowers of Simple-Leaf Tick Clover caught my eye.  I knew immediately that the flowers belonged to the Pea Family, but it took me a bit of looking to locate the species.  Tick clovers make attractive pink-purple flowers from May through October but are more commonly known for their annoying seed pods that stick to socks and pant legs in the fall and winter, which is why they are also called Beggar's Ticks.  The Simple-Leaf Tick Clover (Desmodium psilophyllum) is the only species of tick clover in this area that has simple leaves rather than the trifoliate (composed of three leaflets) leaves of other tick clovers.

Simple-Leaf Tick Clover (Desmodium psilophyllum)

Blue Mist-Flower also bloomed along the creek.  Blue Mist-Flower (Eupatorium coelestinum) is a late-summer to fall blooming perennial that is common in moist, shady habitats in central Texas.

Blue Mist-Flower (Eupatorium coelestinum)

As Hamilton Creek and the trail neared the Pedernales River, the canyon widened and the trail climbed away from the creek.  The water of the creek disappeared beneath the sandy creek bed into groundwater, so the creek, though running in the section beneath the pool, did not flow into the Pedernales River.  The river itself was also dried up, with rolling mounds of hot sand left where the river usually flowed.  Lee and I walked along the riverbed, hoping to spot a flowing portion of the river around the next bend, but we didn't get far before the course, sharp grains of sand accumulating between our feet and our Tevas motivated us to step into the warm pools of water, all that remained of the Pedernales river.  As far as we could see in both directions, the river was reduced to intermittent pools, and some of the cypress trees along the river were responding to the drought by turning orange-red, getting ready to drop their leaves two months early.

In a few low spots, the sand was still moist, indicating that the river may have flowed, or at least held more discontinuous pools of water, very recently.  Heat-hardy wildflowers were blooming along the riverbank, making the most of the receding water supply.  Small, pink blooms of Prairie Agalinis hid in a tangle of greenery alongside a tall stand of bright-yellow Tatalencho.  Farther down the bank, a colony of White Boneset bloomed.  White Boneset (Eupatorium serotium), a perennial in the sunflower family, prefers the moist soil along streams, where it blooms from August through October.

White Boneset (Eupatorium serotium)

Clammyweed, a sticky plant in the same family as the plants that produce caper berries and peppercorns, has distinctive flowers with pink to purple stamens that are much longer that the white petals.  Clammyweed (Polanisia dodecandra) is common in dry creek beds, along low-flowing creeks, and on roadsides, blooming May through October.

Clammyweed (Polanisia dodecandra)

The showiest and most abundant flowers along the river bed were the orange-highlighted yellow flowers of the Rattlebush.  Rattlebush (Sesbania drummondii) is a woody shrub that is common along waterways and in dry stream beds in central and east Texas.  The leaves of Rattlebush, like those of many heat-tolerant shrubs in the Pea Family, are compound, composed of many (20 to 50) small leaflets.  The seedpods of Rattlebush, which are are flattened around each seed, remain on the plant into the winter, long after the leaves have fallen from the plant.  The mature seeds are loose in the pods and rattle when shaken by the winds of winter cold fronts, giving the plant its name.  The seeds of Rattlebush are poisonous.

Rattlebush (Sesbania drummondii)

Wanting to escape the bright sun of midday and the sharp sand of the river bed, Lee and I returned, high-stepping to kick sand from our Tevas with every step, to the trail along the creek.  Usually I prefer a loop trail, and the chance to walk down a new section of trail for an entire hike, but this time I was glad to return back along the same short trail, to get another dose of what has been almost entirely missing from my life this summer, walking in the woods along running water.